Tatical Formation Movement

[freire01]

It is possible to choose between formations like column, line, wedge in the movement ?

thanks

[Erwin]

Unfortunately there are no formation commands of the type you mean.  Can try and do that manually with split squads, but it's not the same.

[Ultradave]

No, but it's on the "wish list"

 

[Thewood1]

I think its been on the wish list since the CMBO days.

[MikeyD]

Vehicle tactical spacing is a do-it-yourself affair.  With the exception of CMSF desert or CMRT steppe you can't really pull off training manual formations without quickly running into one obstruction or another. I recall  European LOS doesn't often exceed 1200m and is more often much shorter. So your flying wedge formation gets about 2 minutes of driving time before you hit the next village or tree line.

[chuckdyke]

On 1/19/2024 at 10:14 PM, freire01 said:

It is possible to choose between formations like column, line, wedge in the movement ?

thanks

You need to take note of how the teams naturally split up after plotting a move order. Example two men scout team split up and each take a position around the corner of a building.

[Thewood1]

1 hour ago, MikeyD said:

Vehicle tactical spacing is a do-it-yourself affair.  With the exception of CMSF desert or CMRT steppe you can't really pull off training manual formations without quickly running into one obstruction or another. I recall  European LOS doesn't often exceed 1200m and is more often much shorter. So your flying wedge formation gets about 2 minutes of driving time before you hit the next village or tree line.

Steel Beasts actually does it very well.  And their waypoint system allows changing formations automatically based on obstacles, terrain, spotting, and taking fire.  You can set formation, speed, use cover, use roads, and spacing with all being adjusted based on waypoint settings.  Its cool watching a wedge form, drift apart, then reform.  Its not perfect, but is very effective. 

btw, if you think its about training ground formation driving, you are mistaken.  Formations are trained for and executed for a reason.  Your routes are planned around what formation you'll need in transit to give you coverage and how you'll be positioned.  LOS/LOF is a key aspect of what formation you'll use.  It is pretty quick to set up a column with AORs in a few minutes for a company of vehicles in SB.  its probably 10-15 minutes at least in CM.  And even then that pathing can get screwed up pretty easily.

The point is its doable and just depends on priorities.

[IICptMillerII]

On 1/19/2024 at 7:14 AM, freire01 said:

It is possible to choose between formations like column, line, wedge in the movement ?

thanks

Sadly no. Should have been something added to the game at some point in its long lifetime in my opinion. Having to individually order lots of units around makes turn by turn gameplay incredibly tedious, and time consuming as well. Platoon level movement using formations would simplify (in a good way) much of the standard gameplay loop. 

Also, vehicles absolutely would travel in formations regardless of terrain. In fact, the whole purpose of different formations is to ensure that vehicles are moving in some form of formation despite the terrain. For disruptive terrain, the file/column is generally used, and depending on how disruptive the terrain is will also influence the spacing of the formation. I can assure you from personal experience that vehicles do not just wander around on their own, and especially not in a tactical environment (at least in properly trained militaries). Safety and unit cohesion being chief reasons why. 

There is no desire to develop formations by the powers that be though, sadly, so no use in wishing for it. 

[Thewood1]

In a WW2 timeframe, its a little more understandable to not get too hung up on formations.  There was a lot less discipline and until later war a lot of what we consider as formations were still not firmly established.  For the WW2 era, its more about making the player grind through the micromanagement needed to play effectively.

But Cold War and Black Sea not having SOPs, formations, etc. is one the main reasons I really struggle with CM's engine in modern settings.

Edited January 28 by Thewood1

[Centurian52]

While there is nothing you can do about team formations, you can put your squads, platoons, and companies into whatever formation you like. The squad formations you can form are limited by the number of teams you can break the squad into. You cannot form a late WW2 daimond formation with a US infantry squad, for example, because you can only break the squad into three teams, and the diamond formation requires five elements (the four points of the diamond, plus the BAR team in the center). But you can create any triangular formation, such as line, column, wedge, vee, echelon left, and echelon right. It's just a matter of placing your teams in the right places to get the squad formation you want, your squads in the right places to get the platoon formation you want, and your platoons in the right places to get the company formation you want. You then just need to give group orders to the whole platoon or company and they will maintain that formation (more or less, it might start to break up a bit over longer movement orders).

I was just playing The Battle for Borgo Cascino, for CMFI. That scenario features a US infantry company advancing over a wide expanse of ground towards a hilltop villa and a hilltop farm. For my company I opted for a two up, one back (vee) formation, with each of the forward platoons advancing towards one of the hilltops. The rear platoon would reinforce whichever of the forward platoons needed help. Each of my platoons was in a two up, one back formation (though in retrospect a one up, two back (wedge) formation would have made more sense, since you generally want to make contact with the smallest force possible). And each of my squads was in a wedge formation. Since the terrain was so open I opted for a very dispersed formation. Each of the teams in my squads had three action squars of horizontal separation, with the forward team in the wedge being a further three action squares ahead of the rearward teams. The two forward squads in my platoon were 6 action squares apart, with the rearward squad 6 action squares behind and centered between the two forward squads, and the HQ team dead center of the formation. My two forward platoons were 12 action squares apart, with the rearward platoon being 12 action squares behind and centered between the two forward platoons, and the company HQ  and XO teams together in the center.

So yes, you can have almost all the formations you want in Combat Mission. You just have to arrange them manually. There is no button for automatically getting your units into formation.

Edited January 28 by Centurian52

[herr_oberst]

On 1/28/2024 at 9:29 AM, Centurian52 said:

So yes, you can have almost all the formations you want in Combat Mission. You just have to arrange them manually. There is no button for automatically getting your units into formation.

Yup, it's definitely a more manual operation, and you might need to break your planned long movement into stages to account for terrain et al, and adjust, but its possible. Not always fun, or as simple as click-click, now its echelon right, click-click, now its one-up-triangle.